Young And Old At The Same Time In `Akimbo'

STAGE REVIEW

Rosemary Prinz, 74, Shines As Stricken Teen

February 01, 2005|By MALCOLM JOHNSON; Special to The Courant

For longtime devotees of daytime TV drama, the casting of the sweetheart of ``As the World Turns'' in ``Kimberly Akimbo'' will come across as a masterstroke. Once again Rosemary Prinz wears a Penny Hughes ponytail, as she did in 1956. But now she is acting as an unusual teenager, afflicted with a disease that accelerates her aging.

Prinz, 74, has returned to Hartford's TheaterWorks for a role that suits her perfectly. As Kimberly, she uses the eternal bright-as-a-penny cuteness that endeared her to soap audiences -- the dry, crinkling voice, the sparkling eyes, the tiny form -- and her present age, to divide her characterization between fresh youth and advanced, fragile age. When Kimberly dons a white Salvation Army wig and an old ladies' dress and shoes to impersonate a grandmother, the transformation into senescence is shocking -- to the people of the play, and to the audience.

David Lindsay-Abaire's 2000 play, which opened Friday night, blends naughty, sometimes tasteless comedy with a poignant portrayal of progeria, a disease caused by mismatched B chromosomes. With its depiction of Kimberly's condition and its smart, sometimes vulgar repartee, ``Kimberly Akimbo'' sometimes seems a disease-of-the-week sitcom. But there are also touches of both ``The Sopranos'' and some of the biting farces of Christopher Durang in this portrait of lower-middle-class suburban New Jersey.

Lindsay-Abaire (whose ``Fuddy Mears'' also centers on a woman with a strange malady) focuses on an absurdly dysfunctional family in ``Kimberly Akimbo.'' The 16-year-old's dad, Jeb Brown's hulking, foggy Buddy, is an alcoholic gas station worker, while her mom, Antoinette LaVecchia's inflated Pattie, is a loud, pregnant hypochondriac with bandaged arms as a result of carpal tunnel operations. Later in the play, Colleen Quinlan's clownish, thuggish Aunt Debra arrives.

Because of her illness, Kimberly lives through the agonies of high school as an outcast. But early in the play, she meets another reject, who loves anagrams and Dungeons & Dragons. This awkward-yet-forward Jeff, a convincing teenage loser as acted by Dan McCabe, initially takes on Kimberly as a science project, interviewing her for a paper on her disease. Later, as they become friends and incipient lovers, he gives her an anagram name, Cleverly Akimbo.

Rob Ruggiero's direction unfolds the family's hurts and troubles and the offbeat love story at a sharp, smartly timed pace, amid bursts of laughter. Some of the gags have Kimberly, at once innocent and dignified, as personified by Prinz, emitting familiar vulgarities, but the actress rises above these moments.

Initially, the play's chief fascination arises from Prinz's duality, as Kimberly reacts like a teenager who knows that her frozen life can end at any moment. Act I ends with a shocking heart attack, creating an air of suspense. But Kimberly improves, and Act II gathers intensity. Ill health hangs over the quick scenes that come and go in Act II in the plaid-wallpapered little house shared by the family. The friendship between the two teens deepens into sexual attraction.

The three adult characters are both grotesque and recognizable. Brown makes Buddy into a big, affable guy who avoids the family scene by getting sloshed night after night in friendly bars. LaVecchia makes Pattie ridiculous and a little sad, as she dictates her life into a tape recorder in hopes the new infant will not turn out like Kimberly. Much is made of her inability to punch the buttons on her tape player, with her elbows, chin, etc. The most compelling presence is Quinlan, whose bright red hair pokes out, from the sides of her head, under mannish caps or 'do rags. But all three are outsized manifestations of Orwellian prole diets.

``Kimberly Akimbo'' presents mass tourist sites as ends of the American dream. And Ruggiero's production, which shifts from drab, ugly, greenish interiors to cloudy, snowy exteriors through Michael Schweikardt's ingenious setting, ends with a frightening, finally liberating climax in a clash of John Lasiter's lighting and J Hagenbuckle's sound.

Because of its emphasis on low humor, ``Kimberly Akimbo'' will not delight sensitive audiences. Yet Prinz, through her projections of Kimberly's defenses and wounds and unspoken thoughts, brings a touching humanity to a strange and deeply metaphoric condition.

``Kimberly Akimbo'' continues through March 6 at the Hutensky Theater, 233 Pearl St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2:30 and 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m., with Sunday evening performances Feb. 20 and 27 and March 6 at 7:30. Tickets: $35 to $55. Box office: 860-527-7838.